Chapter 30 – MADDIE
MADDIE
Idressed for my meeting with Damon the new way, which took ten minutes.
There used to be a system. A stylist on retainer, racks arriving by season, nothing worn twice where it might be photographed, a closet the size of Ellie's kitchen curated for a woman whose job was to appear.
I'd left all of it hanging in that house, eight years of armor in garment bags, and I hadn't missed it once.
I wore the green linen I'd bought in Lisbon with my own money on a street whose name I never learned, because it was the best thing I owned that had no history of waiting in it, and because the woman going up to that roof bought her own clothes now and dressed for nobody's cameras.
His ring was still on my hand. I'd worn it through three countries and a separation filing, and the reasons changed depending on the day.
Some days it was habit. Some days it was armor against men at gallery openings.
Some days it was the last open question I hadn't answered, sitting where questions sit, in plain sight.
I'd quit needing my own feelings to be tidy.
It was still there, so I went to dinner with it on.
Two years ago I made it as far as the Sheridan's lobby and turned around. I crossed it this time without slowing down, past the fountain I'd stood at doing the math of going up alone, and the elevator took me to the roof, and the doors opened on wind.
The terrace was empty. Forty tables under strung lights and not one person at them, the lemon trees moving in their copper planters, the city laid out past the railing exactly as the magazine had promised, and one table in the corner lit with candles.
I stood in the elevator doors and did the old arithmetic before I could stop it, what a buyout like this runs on a Sunday, the figure arriving unbidden in the column where his gestures always landed, and the tiredness that came with that column started up on schedule.
I walked onto the empty terrace and realized I wasn't performing. For the first time in my adult life, I walked into a restaurant without wearing a mask and checking for who was around to see it.
Damon was there. But I was done wearing the mask for him, too. If there was even a chance we could work this out, and a part of acknowledging my messy feelings was allowing myself to admit there was still a small, hopeful part of me that wanted to, it had to be with my true face. And his.
He stood up when he saw me. Slowly, like he'd rehearsed not rushing.
He looked thinner. Still the same devastatingly handsome man he'd always been, but older around the eyes, his collar a quarter inch loose, and his eyes went to my hand before they went to my face.
I watched the ring land on him. I watched hope come up in him so fast and so naked it was almost indecent, and I watched him catch it and put it away and decide not to say a word about it.
There was a small box beside my plate.
It put one cold drop down my spine. I knew his boxes. I'd opened a month of them, every one an invoice, and I sat down and looked at this one and decided I wasn't going to perform around it. If it was earrings, I'd know what tonight was. The box could wait.
"Thank you for coming," he said. "You waited two years for this kitchen. We should let it feed you before I say anything."
So we ate, some of it, the food arriving quiet and very good, and he asked about the upcoming show. Then he did the thing I still wasn't used to, which was stay in the room for the answer.
I told him about my trip. About the gallery I'd been painting in, and the work that sold. He asked which painting sold first and I told him. What shocked me was the fact that he was actually interested in what I had to say.
When the plates were gone he set his napkin down, and I watched him decide to begin.
"I'm not going to ask you to come home tonight," he said. "I haven't earned the sentence. I want to be clear about what tonight is so you don't have to spend it braced. You're owed an accounting, out loud, to your face. Then I have one question. Whatever you answer, I'll walk you to the elevator."
"All right," I said, folding my arms and leaning back in my chair. "Account."
He kept his hands folded on the table where I could see them.
"For eight years I treated you like the thermostat.
You ran my house, my family, half my company, and I decided not to see the work because not seeing it was cheaper.
You asked me for one trip. I canceled it twice, and that magazine sat in the kitchen drawer for two years, and that was just one out of countless failings.
" He ran his hand through his hair as he spoke, the way he always did when he was genuinely distressed about something. I'd just never seen it be me.
"The night the crisis broke, you found the right question in thirty seconds in the car," he continued.
"I dismissed you. Chastised you. And when it came to that room, I looked at what was a human, empathetic moment and saw a liability.
And I let Emily humiliate you while you stood there waiting for one word from me.
I'll see your face from that minute for the rest of my life. I should."
The wind moved the lemon trees. I didn't help him. I'd promised myself that much on the drive over, even if it was getting harder to keep the tears at bay. I told myself it was just because I was remembering that moment and there was truth in that. But not all of it.
A part of me had been longing to hear him say these words for so long that it hurt now that it was actually happening. I'd already given up on it.
"But that night was far from my first mistake where she was concerned.
" He paused, and I could hear what the next part cost him.
"I never should have hired her to begin with.
And the fact that I didn't talk to you about it was so callous I'm even more ashamed of that.
And then, when you had perfectly reasonable objections, I dismissed those too. "
"You did," I finally said, my voice steadier than I'd expected. "You've been good at that over the years."
He took the words and didn't argue or defend himself.
"I have," he said in a somber tone that made me believe him far more than theatrics would have.
"Emily lied to me and she'll answer for it in court.
But I gave her the ammo for what she did.
I let her work her way in, I let her erode boundaries.
A hand on the shoulder here, standing too close there.
I swear to you, it never went beyond that.
I never would have let it. But I don't expect you to believe me about that either, and the fact that I let her into our lives at all is a crime. "
His words took me by surprise, not because they weren't true but because they were. I'd just never expected Damon to be the one to see it.
"I believe you," I finally said, and it was true. Because I knew this man. Eight years and you knew when someone was lying. I knew what he was capable of, and what he wasn't. Which was why I'd left.
But then, I'd never thought he was capable of this. Of taking accountability. It was small, but it was a stat.
"You said you had a question," I said quietly. "Ask it."
"I'm not asking for forgiveness, and I'm not asking you to come home, and I'm not asking you to love me," he began, his hand twitching like it wanted to reach for mine from habit.
But it was a habit we'd never formed. "I'm asking for the chance to earn the right to ask.
Time, on your terms, at whatever distance you want.
Let me show up, small and boring, for as long as you'll allow. That's the whole request."
I sat with it. The old reflex came up, the pull to soothe him and make this easier, and for once it had no work to do. The decision was mine and nobody needed me to hurry it.
"You had Emily," I murmured. "She would have taken you back. I know she would have. And I need to know the truth. Did you reject her this time because you knew what she'd done? Or because you truly didn't want her?"
I saw the surprise written on his face. And I braced myself for the answer.
"The latter," he said with such earnestness I believed him, not only because it was the answer my heart wanted but because I knew my husband's voice when he was lying and this wasn't it.
"I only saw those messages because she left the room.
Because I'd told her the closeness, the inappropriateness had to stop.
She was angry, but she heard it. She heard the words I should have spoken to her months ago.
Again, I don't expect you to believe me. But it's the truth."
I knew it was. I knew it, but I just didn't know if it changed anything. If it was enough.
While I was deciding, he stood, took the small box from beside my plate, came around the table, and went down on one knee.
We were married. Married men don't kneel unless they're starting the whole machine over, and if there was a ring in that box, he had learned nothing. I was already working out how I'd leave when he opened it.
It was empty.
I looked at the velvet slot where a ring should sit, and then at him, and waited, because I had no idea what was happening.
"When you walked in still wearing it, I forgot everything I'd planned," he said quietly.
"I'd hoped you were still wearing it, but I doubted it.
And I don't have the right to that ring being on your hand.
It's a promise I got from you before I'd earned it, and I'm not going to kneel here and let it keep working for me. May I?"
I gave him my hand, still confused. What had this man done with my husband?
He slid the ring off my finger. Eight years, and it came off with no resistance at all. He set it in the velvet, closed the lid, and put the box in my palm.
"It's yours," he said, closing my fingers around it.
My skin warmed at his touch and my heart fluttered in that familiar way in spite of myself.
"The ring and the choice. Keep it in a drawer.
Wear it on a chain. Never look at it again.
Sell it. Do whatever you like, but if there's ever a day I've become a man you'd hand it back to, you'll know it without me saying a word, and it'll mean what it should have meant the first time.
I don't deserve to be worn, Maddie. But I want to earn it.
I want to earn the right to be the husband you should have had from the beginning. Will you give me the chance?"
My hand felt strange without the weight.
"Yes," I said, my voice breaking. "One chance, Damon. And it's going to take longer than you think."
"I know." He was still on one knee. I watched his face for the winning look, the one I knew better than anyone alive. It didn't come. Only sincerity. "I'm counting on it."